Session descriptions

Design your Perfect Organisation.

Design your perfect organisation that fit your optimisation goals.

Many organisations are adopting Agile practices, many organisations are finding ways to improve but little of them are truly designing their organisations with understanding. Blindly adopting any kind of Agile Scaling framework will result in tensions that require effort and energy that could be used to deliver more outcome instead.

Want to avoid this in the future?

Want to get a better understanding?

Want to acquire a tool to help your organisation?

Join us in a work session where you will be designing a perfect I.T. organisation together with all other participants and discover which (parts) of existing Agile Scaling Frameworks are best suited for your organisation.

Many organisations are adopting Agile practices, many organisations are finding ways to improve but little of them are truly designing their organisations with understanding. Blindly adopting any kind of Agile Scaling framework will result in tensions that require effort and energy that could be used to deliver more outcome instead.

Want to avoid this in the future?

Want to get a better understanding?

Want to acquire a tool to help your organisation?

Join us in a work session where you will be designing a perfect I.T. organisation together with all other participants and discover which (parts) of existing Agile Scaling Frameworks are best suited for your organisation.

Catch: "There is no such thing as perfection" 🙂

We will guide you through a series of exercises that will generate insights in the organisational dynamics that are in place within an I.T. organisation and it's surrounding departments. With that insight you will design a Perfect Organisation (inspired by John Seddon) and evaluate existing Agile Scaling Frameworks on best fit in order to avoid tensions and maximise impact.

We will not build yet another scaling framework, we are not going to de-evaluate any framework, we are going to try to find the best fit and figure out what to use from existing frameworks like SAFe, LeSS, DAD, Nexus, Scrum at Scale… to grow a perfect organisation.

I wish I had your problem!

Using provocation to establish personal change

We are grateful to our parents because they raised us properly. We learned about common courtesy and about being nice to people. We were taught to mind our language because we might hurt one's feelings.

Bullshit! Well…in a way 🙂

Now is the time to undo some of the damage our parents and teachers inflicted upon us. During this session you will learn how to provoke without turning evil.

Goal of the session:

How to provoke without turning evil

Intended audience:

Marieke, Leo, Bram, Vincent, Hank, Ellen

Expected experience:

Have empathy

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

We all have problems. Major ones! Or…do we?

Establishing change can be quite difficult. Especially when you are Mister Nice Guy or Madam Love It All. Whether you are a coach, a manager, a developer, or anyone else in an agile environment: everybody talks about change, but only few seem to really own it. Especially you.

So stop trying to own change. Start granting ownership to others! That's what you do when applying provocative techniques. It is an extremely effective way to avoid hard work by shoving that up other people's asses!

If you believe all this, prepare yourself to be disappointed during this provocative session where you learn to apply provocative techniques in way that is both effective and respectful. Exercises included. You'll add a significant skills to your arsenal. But take heed: it will all come at a cost…

This session is aimed at anyone who wishes to lean about provocation. The mindset and techniques behind provocation are usable to anyone who works with other people. The session has been provided to groups of beginning and experienced coaches before, who hailed it as "very inspiring". You don't need to be a coach to benefit! Though you are required to be a human being with a heart.

How to kickstart an Agile mindset in a HUGE organisation

A real life case study.

We present a real life case study on how to ignite an Agile mindset throughout a HUGE organisation (+4.000 employees).

Not by following a single approach but through a series of activities, decentralized and uncontrolled: running an online company wide retrospective, organising lean coffee sessions & the companies first open space, using and abusing available systems, applying some culture hacks while having a lot of fun.

Goal of the session:

We want to inspire you and get input on experiments we can run next to spice things up.

Intended audience:

Leo,Bram,Philippe,Georges,Vincent,Joke,Ellen

Session Type:

30 min short experience report (30 min)

– we ran a company wide online-retrospective with over a 100 people resulting in +400 feedback items in a very efficient way

– we run bi-weekly sessions in open format inspiring people and making things happen

– we organised a first internal Open Space with 58 people, 24 sessions in 4 hours resulting in 58 actions

– we started an open collaboration platform where anyone in the company can blogpost their agile experiences

Ow, did we mention our organisation is a very traditional one? Where bureaucracy and office politics flourish sometimes to unknown heights? 🙂

Shit Agile Coaches Say

How insider Agile jargon drives undesired behavior

Agile coaches use insider Agile jargon that real people may not understand in the way the coaches intend. We'll examine the plain English meanings of certain words commonly used by coaches, and explore how misunderstandings can lead to undesired behaviors.

Goal of the session:

Self-awareness and reflection on the part of Agile coaches about the impact of the words they use to explain and encourage Agile practices.

Intended audience:

Persona: Ellen. Agile/Scrum/XP coaches

Expected experience:

Moderate to advanced experience

Session Type:

75 min discovery session

Goal of the session:

Help coaches become aware of the potential unintended effects of certain words commonly used by Agile coaches, so that they can consider more effective ways to explain things to people.

Need for the session:

The Agile community has settled into a set of assumptions and buzzwords that they rarely question. We attend conferences and user group meetings where we encounter other agilists almost exclusively, and rarely interact with others. In our sessions, we repeat and reinforce the jargon of our own community: English words with special, magical meanings that real people understand differently than we expect.

When people hear or read the special words, they understand the common English meanings and not the magical meanings Agilists want them to understand. As a result, many people set off in the wrong direction when they begin to learn and apply Agile principles and practices.

How the learning objectives of this session will help a coach to be a better coach:

Coaches can become more effective by observing the effects of their words on others, and adjusting their communication accordingly. This session raises awareness of the effects of words that have become "standard" in the Agile community, and are therefore never questioned by Agile coaches. This can help them become more aware of the impact of these words.

"Self-awareness" in this context means to be actively conscious of the effects of the words we choose when we explain things.

"Reflection" in this context means to think about how we communicate and to visualize potentially more-effective ways to communicate.

Let's compare the plain English meanings of certain Agile buzzwords with their special, "insider" meanings, and explore how we can unintentionally drive the wrong behaviors in our clients.

Estimates are just estimates. Also estimates have the tendency to become the assumed truth, while at the start of the project knowledge is lacking and uncertainty is greatest.

You might have experience with estimates that were quite accurate and others that completely sucked. So what influences the accuracy? Come and play the #NoEstimates game in different constellations to find out which factors influence your predictions and how your policies can alleviate that.

This game gives insights to developers who are asked to give estimates, to business people asking the question above and to managers trying to manage all of this.

Mind you:

Contradictory to the name of the session, #NoEstimates does not do away with estimates.

#NoEstimates attempts to reduce the waste and misconceptions associated with them.

Practices for effective meetings, proposal forming and decision making

The goal of this session is to share experiences regarding meeting facilitation and more specifically decision-making practices. Those kind of meetings which have as goal to decide on a next action, or a proposal to move forward. Quite often people spend time in meetings, but are not actively involved. Or worse: people are part of meetings in which "things get decided", but people are not sharing their opinion in a transparant way (they silently agree). Consequently decisions are made which are not widely accepted. We will explain the technique of proposal forming and sociocratic consent decision making as an alternative for other existing decision making techniques. We invite you to come and listen to our experiences of applying this method in real work life.

Goal of the session:

Sharing of tips and tricks for effective meetings and consent decision making.

Session Type:

30 min short experience report (30 min)

How much time do you spend in meetings? A better question could be: the time that you spend in meetings, did you spend it effectively? Did you and the others involved reach your goal?

In our organisation we have been learning and trying to practice meeting facilitation methods, including the proposal forming, consent decision making and objection resolving pattern (as defined in Sociocracy 3.0). We invite you to come and listen to share insights and practicalities when using these patterns.

Better Storytelling

Use the 9 Hollywood steps to inspire the people around you!

In this session, we will teach you how to tell stories that will double your power of persuasion. Using the 4-connect method and the 9 Hollywood steps, you will have the right tools to create convincing and inspiring stories.

Goal of the session:

Participants will learn new tools and techniques to increase their storytelling skills.

Intended audience:

Jan, Marieke, Leo, Bram, Vincent, Joke, Hank, Ellen

Expected experience:

Everyone who has ever told or heard a story.

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

Are you ready for your next presentation?

How will you convince your team members, managers or users?

How will you keep their attention? And will you be able to move them?

Too often, people lose their attention during meetings or presentations. Nobody likes to listen to a series of facts or complicated information. They would rather hear a good story!

In fact, the human brain is designed to process and remember stories, as well as the feelings that go along with them. Telling stories is therefore a powerful way to reach people.

In this session, we will teach you how to tell stories that will double your power of persuasion. Using the 4-connect method and the 9 Hollywood steps, you will have the right tools to create convincing and inspiring stories.

Theory U

Leading from the Future as It Emerges

In the Agile world we learn from feedback. When you think of it, feedback is something that comes from the past. Theory U turns that around and is actively looking at how we can learn from the Future, as it emerges. Theory U fits perfectly with the Agile mindset and also with the "wholeness" as used in Teal organisations.

Despite the name it is something you have to experience. Allow yourself to be inspired.

Goal of the session:

Experience & feel what theory U can do for you. Be inspired to for what it could do for others.

Intended audience:

Open to go further than to listen and talk to each other

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

As is the case in Agile: the principles are very simple, the application takes a lifetime.

Since it emerged around 2006, Theory U has come to be understood in three primary ways: first as a framework; second, as a method for leading profound change; and third,

as a way of being – connecting to the more authentic of higher aspects of our self.

Theory U can be applied in an extremely broad sense. It provides perspective from individual listening skills, over how to organize a community to how to look at the current world.

Annelies and Jan both took a different approach to get started with Theory U and have used it for some time now. They joined forces and together they offer a taste of the theory, Theory U in action and we close with a couple of stories/experiences.

The power of blockchain

Your first steps towards developing using blockchain technology

We will live code a blockchain application. We will not give you an in-depth explanation of what blockchain is; we will also not give you powerpoints explaining what you can use blockchain for. We will show you how easy it is to develop for blockchain.

Goal of the session:

We want to show you that it is quite easy to develop using blockchain technology. No fear, just do get started!

No prior knowledge required, though understanding web development and React may help a bit.

Session Type:

75 min hands on coding/design/architecture session

To show you the power of Blockchain we are going to demonstrate how you can make an application that can be trusted by anyone. We will create a game where cheating is impossible. The game is a live guessing game. Anyone can set a challenge consisting of a question and its answer. The first person to guess the correct answer wins that challenge, and takes away the prize money.

The game is called ÐQuestions. It consists of a web based UI, and a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain where you would normally find the backend. This smart contract ensures that not even us can cheat the game.

We won’t bore you with powerpoint bullet lists from hell, nor will we simply use handwaving to explain the concepts. We will go on stage and actually program the game during this session. We’ll show you that even^H^H^H^H^H especially in immature development environments you can rely on good coding practices such as Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration.

We intend for you to walk away from this session not only knowing how to start developing a Blockchain app, but also wanting to!

Joggling Agile and Architecture

How to make Agile and Architecture best friends and carry out the projects towards success.

Joggling Agile and Architecture in most of the projects is not an easy task, especially due to some misconceptions regarding software architecture (e.g. big-up front design, a lot of documentation, etc) and agile methodology (e.g. best architectures emerge, lack of documentation, etc).

During this session we will share, from both theoretical and practical standpoint (e.g. including real life examples), guidelines and tactics which might improve productivity and carry out your project towards success.

Current talk starts with an incursion from the very beginning, explaining when and why Architecture and Agile emerged, detailing the context and focusing a bit on their histories.

It also reveals current perceived tensions between Agile and Architecture and answers the main questions or dilemmas we might have heard in the projects:

– What are the Agile Manifesto traps in lights of Architecture?

– Are Agile and Architecture real enemies or just friends?

– Can we blend them together in our projects?

– How can they coexist without conflicting each other?

– What is the interaction between Architect and Scrum Master or Product Owner?

– How much documentation or upfront design is needed?

(including real life examples)

Based on our experience (Xavier’s as Agile Catalyst at Murex and myself as Software Architect at Luxoft) we will try to cover all of these topics and provide attendees real life examples and guidelines about how to deal with them in a successful manner.

The 8 Stances of a Scrum Master

Re-imagine the Scrum Master role

Experience the potential of the Scrum Master role in a unique way. Re-imagine the Scrum Master role by practicing the 8 different stances and increase the chance of successful Scrum Mastery. The workshop will be fun, interactive and engaging. You don’t want to miss it!

Goal of the session:

A re-imagination of the Scrum Master role

Intended audience:

Ellen, Bram, Georges, Vincent

Expected experience:

Experience with or as a Scrum Master

Session Type:

75 min discovery session

As a Professional Scrum Trainer it's my personal mission create a better understanding of the Scrum Master role. This is a role of many stances and great diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand the spirit of Scrum.

During the workshop I will share my view on the Scrum Master role and discuss the preferred stances but also the most common misunderstandings. Every participant will experience the potential of the Scrum Master role in a unique way. Truly practicing with the 8 different stances increases the chance of successful Scrum Mastery. The workshop will be fun, interactive and engaging. You don’t want to miss it!

You are your own tool

Keylearnings from 16 years in the field of Agile coaches

OK, you start as an Agile coach. You are an experienced Scrum Master. Done already so many projects as a SM and now you go one step higher. Oh wait, I’m a SM, so I’m also a coach. So coaching Agile to teams, stakeholders or whoever, shouldn’t be that difficult.

And then after the first day you realise it’s more difficult than just being a coach. Why didn’t anyone tell me that?

Goal of the session:

So you want to learn from the pitfalls and how to solve them? Come to this session.

Intended audience:

Bram, George, Hank, Ellen

Expected experience:

Nothing

Session Type:

75 min discovery session

As told, it’s not easy just to be an Agile coach. It’s not like when you were a SM and thus in fact a SM. In the last case it was easy, as you focus on your team.

But as an Agile Coach, you are not focussing on one team, but to several team. And the stakeholders or the management are also peaking around the corner to get some coaching. Even the PO can ask you for help. And then there’s still another big thing: The Customer. Every place is different.

But no worry you can survive. Look at us, the both of us also survive and are still there after 16 years.

So you will hear some stories, pitfalls, impediments,… from our 16 years of experience. Both Around 8 years now.

But more important it’s not a two men show. We would like to hear from you, your key learnings in your life as an Agile Coach. And how you solved certain things. Or maybe you have a difficulty and the group can help you finding a solution. So it’s a two way session.

Dirty Tests

Refactor your way out of legacy test code

You have automated tests that are brittle, have complicated set-ups and are amenable to making mistakes in areas that have little to do with the tests – at first sight at least. Developers are loath to make changes, which makes the tests less relevant over time. We want to make our tests easier to handle, but where to start?

Goal of the session:

Get more skilled at refactoring legacy test code

Intended audience:

developers

Expected experience:

experience in unit testing & refactoring

Session Type:

150 min hands on coding/design/architecture session

You have automated tests that are brittle, have complicated set-ups and are amenable to making mistakes in areas that have little to do with the tests – at first sight at least. Developers are loath to make changes, which makes the tests less relevant over time. We want to make our tests easier to handle, but where to start?

In this session you'll get some 'production code', with a challenge to make the tests (and possibly the code) more readable. We'll reflect on what you've done, and give you some pointers to make tests easier to understand – and, therefore, change, extend and reuse.

We'll bring some legacy code bases (Java & C#) for you to work on: code bases with obscure tests, with misplaced mocks, tests that test too much or too little… In pairs, you'll work on understanding the tests and refactoring them to clean, maintainable test code. We will share a number of tips & heuristics for tackling legacy tests.

This workshop is for developers who want to broaden their view on automated testing and test driven development. Prerequisites: some experience in automated unit / integration / end-to-end testing.

Product Backlog management

Tips of the trade

This session will give you some actual tips and tricks on how you can easily manage your product backlog. We will talk about some pitfalls and how you can solve/avoid them. You get to play with Money, Cards, Scope,…. Who says a real life training/discussion can't be fun.

Goal of the session:

Learn something in the session that you can start using in practice right away

Intended audience:

Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Analysts, …

Expected experience:

No level of expertise required

Session Type:

150 min experiential learning session

The product backlog comprises an ordered list of requirements… you probably know that already!

Good, but how to handle:

Scope creep?

IKIWISI?

Bugs?

Triple constraints?

Business value?

Dependency of a backlog item?

Risk?

…

During this session we will give you the tips of the trade!

In order to manage the backlog properly, we'll guide you through:

The basics

Prioritisation techniques and factors

Business Value

Sprint 0

The idea of this training session is not to explain you how it should work in theory,

A new metaphor to understand when Scrum doesn't work well and why. Also: one or two actionable ideas to fight Zombie Scrum in their own organization or team.

Intended audience:

Marieke, Ellen and Bram will greatly enjoy this session. Essentially: Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and people that are looking for ways to help their organization fight Zombie Scrum

Expected experience:

Understanding of Scrum

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

Summary of the session

Agile is huge. Scrum is huge. Over 75% of organisations claim to be doing Scrum one way or another. Although this sounds promising, we fear that we are witnessing a large-scale outbreak of Zombie Scrum, with teams and organisations simply going through the motions like lifeless brain eaters moaning ‘chaaaaaange’ instead of ‘braaaaains’. What may look like Scrum on the surface, turns out to be a lifeless husk on closer inspection. There is no beating heart of working software, no desire to involve customers or users, no emotional response to success or failure and no drive to do anything about this. As it stands, we worry that Zombie Scrum is an impediment to the future of Scrum and Agile.

In this highly interactive, somewhat frightening but also funny, ‘100% Powerpoint Free’ workshop we introduce the audience to the metaphor of Zombie Scrum. Building on the concept of Liberating Structures, we explore symptoms with the audience, identity potential causes and devise survival strategies to help teams and organizations fight back.

During the session we will be using exercises from the Liberating Structures menu exclusively (except for a brief introduction). With their potential to involve and unleash everyone, we allow participants to experience first-hand how Liberating Structures are part of the cure.

Our session is great for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and people active in or around companies that work with Scrum who have experienced not-so-effective Scrum first-hand. The session is also great for people who want to experience Liberating Structures, and see them being applied to the challenge of Zombie Scrum.

About the speakers

Christiaan Verwijs is a costumed Zombie Scrum-fighter at night, but independent Scrum Master, software developer and Agile blogger by day. He is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and takes joy in helping Scrum Teams become Awesome;

Johannes Schartau is an Agile Coach from Hamburg, Germany. Ever since losing his best friend to Zombie Scrum, he dedicated himself to fighting the outbreak using pragmatism, humor and his leather-bound Scrum Guide.

Do Not Deal with Resistance!

A Revolutionary Way to Get People on Your Bus

People don’t resist change. They resist being changed – Peter Senge. Modern psychology is proving him right: the best way to deal with "resistance to change" is to avoid it altogether. In this session, you will experience firsthand, what happens when you feel you are being motivated to change. You will get a chance to experiment with different kinds of questions that work better than trying to motivate others. Furthermore, you will take home a simple 4 step plan and a set of cards with example questions to get out of nasty situations with team members and/or your boss.

Using interview cards, we guide participants to a new way of interacting to facilitate change. These cards are based on two modern techniques in therapy and coaching: Motivational Interviewing, Solution Focused Interviewing. The theory is that people are not necessarily resistant to change but rather ambivalent. We visualize this concept as an ambivalence seesaw with a willing and a resistant side. If you are trying to convince someone to change you press on the willing side of the seesaw, causing the resistant side to come up. You could of course try reverse psychology to make willing side come up but both approaches cost a lot of energy. In this session, we will experiment with ways to avoid the ambivalence seesaw altogether.

(Motivational interviewing evolved from working with addicts. It's a goal-oriented, client-centered counseling style that engages intrinsic motivation by helping the client envision a better future.)

(Solution Focused Interviewing evolved from family therapy. It helps the client envision a preferred future and uses the client's life experiences to co-construct uniquely appropriate and effective solutions to get there.)

The Culture Game

How to deal with the complexity of changing culture

Join this session and play a culture-change simulation game with us. You will be given many cases. You will discuss

these with your group and you will be asked to make decisions to improve the culture of the company so that it becomes more Agile.

This workshop will use a computer simulation of a big organisation, so please bring a laptop or tablet with you. You will be divided in groups of 5 and each group will need one device.

Goal of the session:

Understand the complexity of changing culture and how Spiral Dynamics and the Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions can help you.

Intended audience:

leo, bram, vincent, georges, hank, ellen

Expected experience:

agile coaching experience is helpful

Session Type:

75 min experiential learning session

To help large organisations become Agile, you must address a change to the culture. Changing culture is hard in any circumstance, but changing culture in large organisations is particularly hard. Changing culture with a big up-front-design plan is certainly asking for chaos and failure. Instead, changing culture is best done iteratively and incrementally because the environment we work in is one of the most complex domains possible. Changes in one part of the organisation can have unwanted side effects in other parts of the organisation.

Join this session and play a culture-change simulation game with us. You will be given many cases. You will discuss

these with your group and you will be asked to make decisions to improve the culture of the company so that it becomes more Agile.

During the game, you will get feedback on your decisions. We’ll discuss the most common mistakes and how to avoid them.

At the end of the session, you will have experienced that changing culture is not a linear process, but something that needs a highly systemic approach. You will get the tools to design your own incremental change.

This workshop will use a computer simulation of a big organisation, so please bring a laptop or tablet with you. You will be divided in groups of 5 and each group will need one device.

Presenters

Jurgen De Smet

Jurgen De Smet was a guiding hand in one of the largest Agile transitions in EU Healthcare. A master of game techniques for serious enterprise, he has taken companies in some of the most risk-averse, regulated industries and made them rock star achievers of sustainable innovation.

His Belgium-based company Co-Learning supports senior and middle management and entrepreneurs in building and sustaining learning organizations. Known as tough, knowledgeable, persistent and energizing, he is a driver of Gamestorming across Europe, a Innovation Games Qualified Instructor, and the first to implement Luke Hohmann’s concepts for citizen participation in Budget Games outside the United States.

Jurgen is a Certified LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) Trainer, Licensed Management 3.0 trainer, the author of "Budgetspelen: Inwoners bepalen het beleid!" and "The Effective Use of Gamification Techniques in the Practical World", co-author of "Personal Kanban in a nutshell: The practical guide to personal happiness" and a leader in regional and global communities of practice that keep him freestyling with the best.

Alexander Helleboogh

After my engineering studies, I obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science for research in the field of self-organizing systems. Due to their interactive nature, self-organizing systems are a lot more adaptive to changing environments. I worked several years as a freelance software architect.

So why did I end up in Agile coaching?

Nowadays changing environments push human organizations into becoming more adaptive too. And similar to self-organizing systems, Agile approaches rely heavily on interaction and self-organization as patterns to improve adaptability.

This analogy explains my passion for agile. I've been involved in several large-scale agile transformations where I strive to increase self-organization by fostering openness and interaction among people. This leads to organizations becoming more adaptive. And to interacting people having more fun too.

Patrick Verheij

As an experienced coach, trainer and facilitator I help motivated teams and individuals work effectively and work towards meaningful results. For that I use my knowledge of and experience with the principles and techniques behind agile and lean which I know how to apply both in an IT and in a business context.

In my role as chairman of the Dutch Agile Consortium, I organize events and other means of sharing knowledge by connecting people from different organizations find. I am also initiator and product owner of Certify to Inspire, the agile certification program of the Agile Consortium.

Together with 4 great colleagues I founded Altimos, partner in personal agile change.

Pascal Mestdach

Pascal is an agile enthusiast for +10 years. Having a developer background he fulfilled the scrummaster role in numerous agile initiatives: always bridging the communication gap in the organisation while delivering value early and often. As a change agent Pascal finds ways to introduce the agile mindset in the company while making colleagues shine being agile. Connect with Pascal on https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascalmestdach/ if you want to know more about his professional background, studies, interests, experiences, … or follow him on twitter @pascalmestdach.

Didier Durinck

Dave Nicolette

An IT professional since 1977, Dave discovered Agile in 2002 and found it solved or alleviated many of the problems inherent in traditional IT. Since then, he has been a dedicated practitioner and ardent proponent of change toward Agile and Lean thinking and practices. In recent years, he has worked primarily as an organizational change agent and team coach, drawing inspirtation from Systems Thinking, Lean Thinking, and other schools of thought. He enjoys sharing experiences and effective practices with fellow IT professionals and participates actively in the agile, lean, and software craftsmanship communities.

Olivier Costa

is a member of Ken Gyu dojo where he learns Aikido from Frank sensei and his teacher Tomita Shihan a Japanese grand-master and student of the founder of Aikido: Morihei Ueshiba.

www.WareNatuur.be

He has always been involved in the whole software development cycle. From (business) idea over development & testing until release, follow up (business satisfaction) and maintenance. While writing code primarily in C#, he became an Agile Coach (for very diverse teams writing in very diverse languages) in search of teams he wants to work in.

Inge Gorgon

Inge Gorgon is an Agile Coach with experience on the ground as analist, tester and SCRUM master at Cegeka, Argenta, ICTRA, Telenet, ING and Constructiv. At present, she is assisting LCM in a transition to agile work. 4 times a year she organizes the Facilitation Game Labs with facility formats and games, open to any willing to try.

Victor Hezemans

Hi I’m Victor Hezemans, I’m a student in communication, international event, music and entertainment studies. I specialise in concept development, digital media and gamification.

I’ve also studied ICT for 3 years. This makes me able to connect the two worlds of ICT and communication to bring out the best in them. This is also the reason for my interest in the media like photography, video and most of all gaming. It is my vision that these media can enhance the quality of things like education and work environments.

I was also raised in an Agile home so ever since I was young the homework and chores have been going on the scrum board.

Nicole Belilos

I am an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), with over 13 years experience in the Agile world. I help organizations, teams and individuals on their journey to Agility.

I have a background in Mathematics and Computer Science, and started my career as a programmer in the waterfall world. In 2005 I was introduced to Scrum and the Agile mindset. From then on, I have been an enthusiastic adept of Agile.

I strongly believe in (continuous) learning. I like to teach and share knowledge. Often, I use techniques from acting, improv theatre and storytelling in my workshops and trainings..

I have an international background. I was raised in different cultures, and have lived in The Netherlands, France and the United States. This makes me fluent in Dutch, English and French. It has also sparked my interest in travel and working with different cultures.

Jan De Baere

Digitization is speeding up our world dramatically. In 5-10 years’ time most current products and services will be obsolete. From organisational point of view we must make the switch from static organisations towards dynamic organisations that relentlessly create added value. From management point of view we must make the switch from “managing a pair of hands” towards “creating something together”. From technological point of view we need to embrace digitization. Jan coaches organisations making the switch to the digital era. Clients: Electrabel, ING, AXA.

Annelies De Meyere

Annelies tumbled into Agile by proxy through her husband and the interesting network she encountered, and started mixing these newly discovered skills in her day-to-day work as Service Manager in a high security environment. Feeling the need for better communication across teams and levels within organisations, Annelies made the switch to become an Agile change facilitator via Co-Learning. Helping companies adapt towards a more flexible way of working, guiding teams towards better results and facilitating change. She makes it her business to make sure the people going through a change get the tools they need to cover the distance. She is a brainstorm facilitator, trainer and coach for teams and individuals, with a lot of techniques in her portfolio. She's a Management 3.0 practitioner and facilitator, Certified LeSS Practitioner, Certified Black Belt Innovation Games Architect, Certified Collaboration Instructor and Certified Facilitator of the LEGO(r) SERIOUS PLAY(r) method.

Mark Spanbroek

I am a software developer of many trades. In the past couple of years I have been focussing on mobile development for both iOS and Android. The type of apps that I have worked on for Philips can be described as complex; they almost always include communication with a wireless device and one or several backend systems combined with a non-trivial UI. This has allowed me to find new ways of applying my eXtreme Programming skills when the existing frameworks do not provide clear-cut solutions.

Stefan van den Oord

I have had a passion for software engineering for more than 20 years now. Early in my career I was introduced to Extreme Programming, and a few laters Scrum. The principles behind them are very close to my heart, not only in the field of software development. Extreme Programming has been somewhat of a hype, but by now I feel it does not get the amount of attention that it deserves. Yes, all the communication and process skills are also very important, but the technical basis should not be taken for granted. Good engineers should keep sharpening their skills and should keep practicing. Practice makes perfect!

During the recent years I have been able to work on something that I think is very important for our society: new ways of dealing with user data, putting the user in the center and in control. Blockchain is an important technology that can enable this.

Xavier Rene-Corail

I have been working for Murex, leading software provider for capital markets, for more than 20 years now. From junior developer to development team manager to Agile coach to designer of a nearshore software factory … I lived several lives along this long journey.

Barry Overeem

Barry is a freelance Scrum Master and Professional Scrum Trainer at Scrum.org. He’s an active member of the Scrum community and shares his insights and knowledge by speaking at conferences, facilitating workshops and writings blog posts.

As a Scrum Master, Barry has a focus on creating successful teams with strong skills in self-organization and cross-functionality and a drive for continuous improvement. Barry supports Product Owners in visualising progress, creating a transparent Product Backlog and maximizing the value of the product. He helps organisations in making Scrum successful by supporting management in changing processes, procedures, culture and behaviour.

Due his strong focus on the principles of Agile and the values of Scrum, Barry ensures the spirit of Scrum is truly understood.

Sven Cipido

Already active since 1995. Started as a programmer for PLC, went over to AS/400 and finally got a deep dive into Microsoft Technologies. First as a developer and in the end as a software architect. In 2008 he came in contact with Scrum and saw the light. He got his Scrum Master training from Joseph Pelrine that same year. Now he’s an Agile Coach at Equalminds. He loves to implement the fun part as a Coach/Game Master actively using the Innovation Games and Lego.

At this moment he's working at a customer as a Scrum Master for One finance team and the Delivery Lead (Head of Scrum Masters) for the Finance practice.

Already a few times, he was a speaker at the XPDays, where he presented “The Frog Factory, A Kanban Experience” ,“The Agile Quizzzitch”, "3D Speed Boat Retrospective" and "Play Overload – Innovation Games Meets Lego Serious Play". He’s also the co-author of the book “The Agile Quizzzitch” and worked together with some other Agile Coaches on the Dutch translation of the books “Toolbox for the Agile Coach” by Jimmy Janlén and "50 tips for Graphical Facilitation" by Per Beining.

Marc Evers

Marc works as an independent coach, trainer and consultant in the field of (agile) software development and software processes. Marc develops true learning organizations that focus on continuous reflection and improvement: apply, inspect, adapt.

Marc organizes workshops and conferences on agile and lean software development, extreme programming, systems thinking, theory of constraints, and effective communication. Marc is co-founder of the Agile Open and XP Days Benelux conferences.

He knows how to combine his real-world experience with knowledge that is out there to create novel solutions. He likes to add games to highly-rated workshops, so participants have fun and learn from experience.

Bjorn Conjaerts

I am a super driven, extremely eager to learn Project Manager where communication, structure and effort are of utmost importance to me. I am extremely demanding on myself and expect the same from my team (without increasing the pressure to much onto others). I have a hands on approach to advise and help my team when and wherever needed.

Due to my extensive experience in development of software applications, I know the challenges to be faced when dealing with deadlines in the IT-department. The common goal is to transform customer wishes into a functional and technical analysis and handling complicated situations. This puts me in the position to guide, stimulate and motivate my team with the same end result in mind and getting the job done.

Christiaan Verwijs

Christiaan Verwijs is a costumed Zombie Scrum-fighter at night, but independent Scrum Master, software developer and Agile blogger by day. He is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and takes joy in helping Scrum Teams become Awesome

Johannes Schartau

Remi-Armand Collaris

Remi-Armand Collaris: I believe the main challenge of today's organizations is to create an environment in which people can blossom in cooperation with others. Autonomy and teamwork are important ingredient for that. In my work as organizational coach I help teams to improve team results by taking ownership over their way of working and employing team learning practices. Agile, Scrum, LeSS and Lean are some of my sources of inspiration for practices to make continuous improvement engaging and provocative.

Linda Dorlandt

Momentarily I am involved in managing business change initiatives by the Facilitaire organisation at the Dutch National Police. In this work I facilitate connections between team members and encourage them to take responsibility and in doing that I help self organization teams to emerge. For six years I was also a member (besides project and change manager) of the Works Council of FloraHolland which provides me with a lot of knowledge of the organization and its surroundings. The Works Council of FloraHolland was transforming itself to be more innovative and as second chairman of the council one of my responsibilities is putting together the training program to get there. I have written my Bachelorthesis in Business Psychology about the influence of empowerment on business results. That explains my interest in new insights in improving peoples ways of working and in Agile and Scrum as tools to reach that goal.

Dajo Breddels

Participants

Jan

Jan has been working as a programmer for 5 years now. Jan loves to program. He knows a lot of languages, and a lot of tools. At work, he he is not always happy because the circumstances often force him to deliver the quality he knows he can reach. Jan explores new technologies and trends on the internet and in books and magazines. At night Jan contributes to an open source project together with 10 other guys, from all over the world. That's where he heard about agile methodologies. In the open source group, he is used to work with unit tests, but he hopes to get some real in-depth tips and tricks from experts at the XP Days conference. He is also interested to learn about the latest trends for continuous intergration tools and test automation.

Marieke is part of a team that delivers product software on a regular basis. Several months ago, her team had an introductory training on extreme programming and scrum. Some of the ideas she learned about seemed interesting enough, but she is not sure if this methodology is applicable in their particular situation. After the course, some of her colleagues started to write unit tests, but there still are only a few, and they are not run very often, as far as Marieke can see. They also started to do a daily standup meeting, because according to the trainers that is a tool to enhance communication within the team. But these meetings are rather boring, and they tend to take 1/2 hour, every day. Team members are grumbling about wasting their time.

Marieke started to think all this agile stuff is only an unusable hype. But then she heard about XP Days, and she thought "well, let's give it another chance, if 150 people go to this conference, for 11 years in a row now, maybe there is more to it". She hopes she can hear from real people in real teams how they have applied these techniques, which problems occurred in their situation, and what kind of consequences that had for them.

Leo has been around forever. He has seen everything, done everything. Over the years, Leo has been working as a developer, as a project lead, as a tester, as an analyst, as a manager, and as a consultant. He knows from experience that everything comes back, if you only wait a few years. He has learned that the same problems and the same solutions have been invented and re-invented a hundred times in computer science. He has lived through the rise and fall of uncountable new technologies and methodogies. All of them brand new, all of them the one and only forever best way to make software. Leo wants to go to XP Days because he thinks it's an excellent opportunity to meet with a lot of young, smart and enthusiastic people.

Bram has never missed an XP Days. He has been to several other conferences in Europe, and also attended quite a few bigger agile and other conferences. Bram likes the XP Days, because of the friendly and informal atmosphere. Every year he goes back to work from XP Days full of energy, with a bag full of new ideas and techniques.

Philippe comes to XP Days because his boss told him to go. He has never heard about this agile stuff. He doesn't know what it is, or what it can be used for. He guesses it is something his boss wants to buy. He doesn't really care, because going to this conference means that he will be away from the hectic chaos in the office for 2 days.

mmm I think maybe it is not very useful for Philippe to come to the XP Days? -Vera

Why not? Let Philippe come, let him relax and have a beer and dinner with agile people. He might even attend some presentations. And, once he's relaxed, who knows what could happen? –Pascal

Georges is a project manager. His life is filled with stress, deadlines, difficult programmers, unhappy customers and demanding bosses. Sometimes he wonders if he's chosen the right career.

Lately, Georges has been hearing more and more about agile methods. Some of his ex-colleagues have converted from project management to agile coaching. They tell him tales of vibrant, exciting, fun projects where customers and developers live in perfect harmony. That can't be true. They must be exaggerating. Or are they….?

Vincent is the IT manager of a large company. His teams don't do too badly. Some projects are allright; some don't fully satisfy their users. The CEO has asked him to propose a plan to increase the efficiency of his department by 10% in the next two years. So, Vincent looks around for solutions that might help him to create and implement the plan. He has looked at a lot of things: processes, tools, consultants… He's heard that some other companies (even some reputable companies) have had success with "agile" methods, so he comes to the XP Days to get a taste of what "agile" can offer him. He doesn't know what to expect. Hippy surfer dudes? 18 year old wizz kids with piercings? Greybearded hackers? Oh well… What does he have to lose?

Joke is a product manager for a succesful product company. Joke understands her customers needs, she has lots of ideas for new features that would enhance the product. She knows that this product really enhances its user's lives. That's one of the reasons her company is so succesful. But they have trouble keeping up with customer demand. Joke finds it hard to talk to the development team, to make them understand what she needs in the product. If only she and the development team could work together more efficiently, they could make this product make more of a difference. Maybe this "agile" stuff can help? How does product management work in agile projects? Joke hopes to meet some developers and other product managers who can help her and give her some tips.

Hank is a motivated and experienced software engineer cum system architect who spends his days knee deep in the quagmires of enterprise automation. Appalled and bemused by the shocking waste of time, money, and people, he does his best to bring the joy back in the life of those around him by introducing agile methodologies wherever he sees the opportunity. Hank comes to the XP Days to share with and learn from like-minded colleagues.

Ellen is an agile coach. She's been using agile methods for a few years now. XP, SCRUM, Lean… it doesn't matter much to her. She's more interested in doing things that matter to deliver value for her customers. She wants to work with a happy team, doing meaningful work.

Ellen wants to learn new ideas and share experience of techniques that work. She comes to XP Days because of its friendly and collaborative atmosphere.